Today I learned a fun fact. I didn’t
know how to use Google. I have been using the internet for at least a decade
and I never learned how to properly use Google until today. There is so much
information out there and it is so easy to access. I had never been given the
tools to organize my searches and broaden my scopes. A big take away from today
was how little focus there is in American education on the other side of the
story, the non-American viewpoint. Eliminating the rest of the worlds’ views on
world history eliminates a lot of information. Besides, we already know that American
views aren’t always the right ones. To be truly informed beings, we must have
the ability to look outside our own scopes and see the world through different
eyes. We not only have eliminated world views on history, but also on education
methods. There are huge differences between American and Chinese education systems
and Indian education systems and Russian education systems. We can learn from
them and use that info to better inform how we teach our students. It is amazing and so exciting to me to see the possibilities for using
this information in my future classes.
Another fun bit from the day:
Wikipedia is a good source. Wikipedia was always a site that was shunned by my
teachers and professors. I have only used it in cases where I wanted quick
information about a random subject, and it’s always provided what I needed. I
have hoped for the day that someone would tell me that Wikipedia is reliable. So,
thanks for that. There is no other site that has so much information all in one
place anywhere. It’s an amazing resource for students to not only get starting information,
but also to steal references from. The fact that Wiki has as many references as
it does, and our textbooks had little to none is mind boggling to me, yet I
never questioned it. Because the textbook is always right, right? Wrong,
because of how fast information changes. With the half life of knowledge being
only ten months, the only reliable sources are those found online, ones that
can be updated and revised. Plus, Wikipedia is so much more thorough than I had
been led to believe. It’s not just a free for all and whoever wants to put
anything can. Managers control and edit the pages and make sure they are accurate.
I also appreciated the rating system. Giving a rubric and criteria for people
to look at it a great way to earn validity points. I look forward to blowing my
students’ minds by letting them use Wikipedia.
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